Cycling Canberra

Despite a significant set of countervailing conditions (limited cycling proficiency: never did take that test; limited fitness: just can’t get that ozzie gym buzz; thirty-degree heat; and the fact that Canberra’s built on a scale for cars), it’s not as bad an idea as it might sound renting a cycle for the day for twenty dollars from the hostel and setting out to explore Canberra’s sights by bike.

Getting into and out of the car lanes and across Lake Burley Griffin (a late water-feature addition to even this eminent twentieth century city, personally pushed through the budget by Menzies in the sixties) presents the first challenge; locating the entrance to the new Parliament House presents the next; I manage to cycle round the entire hillock containing it once before realising that what I was looking at first really is the public entrance, and there’s still no bikerack for the wheels so I leave it standing up in the underground carpark.

The new (1988) parliament house is pretty impressive to look round, though there’s no session sitting. I go up to the roof and have a look down the massive avenue that leads across the lake and up to the Australian War Memorial (for a country that’s only ever joined in other people’s wars, there’s a huge emphasis laid on the military legacy in Canberra), then I latch myself onto a guided tour and learn a) that the colours of the lower and upper chambers rather than being baize green and ruby red like the Commons and Lords, are the colour of gum leaves and flowers respectively: shades of grey-turquoise and rusty pink; and b) that the coat of arms of the brave new nation featured the kangaroo and emu because they’re both incapable of walking backwards. This guide also says that the English Parliament’s mace used to be used to hit people on the head with, so I’m not sure whether to trust her…

I don’t think I can bear a lecture on the history of Australian parliamentarianism, so I give new Parliament House at the bottom of the hill a miss. Far more interesting is the Tent Embassy, an aboriginal protest spread out across the lawn in front of the parliament building. Several huts, tents and wooden structures are surrounded by flags and posters condemning the aboriginal genocide, some couching the struggle in Christian terms, others outright denying the possibility of any reconciliation at all. I would have loved to talk to someone, but no-one’s around.

The National Gallery of Australia has a proper bike rack, right by the entrance, and I pop in for a quick spin around to see the controversial Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles (controversial not for its CIA-routine abstract expressionism, d’oh, but for the gallery’s US$2m purchase of it in 1973), and the famous Sidney Nolan 1940s Ned Kelly series, the most famous of which shows Ned Kelly from the rear with his trademark bucket helmet, the sky showing through its letterbox visor, like Magritte painting Don Quixote.

Back over the river, past the National Carillon, which sits on the water playing gentle trills of bells to the glory of the Australian nation, and is only marginally less silly than the Captain Cook water jet, a twenty-metre tall funpark jet of pointless and continuous spume. The riverside cycle trail is very pleasant, and on a cooler day with less to see a full ride around the shores would be very pleasant.

Instead I cycle up the ANZAC parade towards the Australian War Memorial, past a series of subsidiary war memorials commemorating first the A/NZ partnership (a giant pair of carrier-bag handles, with pots of Gallipolli soil buried below, the shared birth pangs of ANZAC militarism), then various individual conflicts including Korea and Vietnam, both of which are quite formally inventive, the Vietnam one peppered inside with all manner of quotes, from battlefield commands to recalling returning to firendlessness after discharge. The AWM itself is a large building on a hill, and contains a museum. WWI is about all I can stomach, and certainly not rooms of boastful display of Australian military technology. In the research centre, it’s surpisingly easy to get a war record printout for my dead friend Arthur Thickett, who fought with the ANZACs in Korea as part of his lifelong search for the enemy. It tells me his number: 210104, and the units he fought in: 1 RAR and 3 RAR, which were deployed in the earlier phases of Australian involvement, but nothing else about his record is available — the Korea and Vietnam files have not yet been released, according to the helpful volunteer guide.

Last stop, in a leafy lane of cottage scientific institutes, I stop at the National FIlm and Sound Archive, previously called ScreenSound and now back to its original name to much satisfaction all round (take note, those working on rebranding exercises). The permanent exhibition has a good selection of Australian sound, film and television history laid out in themed little booths, though the screens are a bit small. The surviving scenes of the Kelly Gang film are on show, though the amount of nitrate damage means it reminds me of Decasia more than The Great Train Robbery. The giftshop is giving away all its old screensound postcards for free, and I get chatting to Jane working there, who when she hears that I’ve been working at the bfi offers to organise a tour of the archive for me, but alas I don’t have time.

Though all I’ve really learned about Canberra as a planned city is that it is, as I expected, totally constructed around the capacities of motor vehicles as transport, the bike’s not a bad way to go… there’s not much problem cycling on the sidewalks and malls if the roads aren’t friendly, and I’m almost reluctant to hand the bike back in at the end of the day.